# JSON Response not in UTF8

**URL:** <https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/json-response-not-in-utf8/2117>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [December 28, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/json-response-not-in-utf8/2117 "2017-12-28T16:43:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kaboume](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de0a6/32.png) [@kaboume](https://discourse.slimframework.com/u/kaboume)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/json-response-not-in-utf8/2117/1 "2017-12-28T16:43:22Z")

</div>

Hello,  
I’have made a API application with SLIM 3 which returns JSON not in UTF8.  
The data come from a db mySql (the encoding of the base is utf8\_general\_ci) and the charset of the driver is set to UTF8. Here is my spot container :

```
$container["spot"] = function ($container) {

    $config = new Config();
    $mysql = $config->addConnection("mysql", [
        "dbname" => getenv("DB_NAME"),
        "user" => getenv("DB_USER"),
        "password" => getenv("DB_PASSWORD"),
        "host" => getenv("DB_HOST"),
        "driver" => "pdo_mysql",
        "charset" => "utf8"
    ]);

```

At the end of the route :

return $response-\>withStatus(200)  
-\>withHeader(“Content-Type”, “application/json;charset=utf-8”)  
-\>write(json\_encode($data, JSON\_UNESCAPED\_SLASHES | JSON\_PRETTY\_PRINT));

But when i call the API with Postman, the JSON contains anormal characteres like Croiz\u00e9 instead of Croizé.

Have you got an idea please  
Thank you.  
Eric

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![llvdl](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.slimframework.com/llvdl/32/78_2.png) [@llvdl](https://discourse.slimframework.com/u/llvdl)\
**Post date:** [December 30, 2017, 11:50pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/json-response-not-in-utf8/2117/2 "2017-12-30T23:50:03Z")

</div>

Hello Eric,

Do you see “\u00e9” in the “pretty” JSON view in Postman, or just in the raw view? I would expect Postman to show “Croizé” in the pretty JSON view (how it should be displayed) and “Croiz\u00e9” in the raw view (how it was sent).

“Croiz\u00e9” and “Croizé” are equal JSON string notations for the string “Croizé”. Like `&nbsp;` and `&#xa0;` both show the same non-breaking space character in HTML.

In JSON unicode characters can be escaped using the `\uxxxx` notation, where xxxx is a hexadecimal number of a unicode character. The character with number `00E9` is é:

[![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/uploads/slimframework/original/1X/d2a507961af3c6af74fd64325b07abe7fb2bcf3e.png)](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf)

By default the [json\_encode](http://php.net/json_encode) function in PHP seems to escape non ASCII-characters in JSON using the `\uxxxx` notation.

Normally, you don’t have to worry about how PHP encodes these characters as long as you feed an UTF-8 encoded string to `json_encode`. If you want, you can add an additional flag to force PHP to disable escaping of the unicode characters:

```php
return $response
    ->withStatus(200)
    ->withHeader(“Content-Type”, “application/json;charset=utf-8”)
    ->write(json_encode($data, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES | JSON_PRETTY_PRINT | JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE)); // add JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE flag

```